Posted
by
Zonk
on Thursday April 28, 2005 @07:38AM
from the widgets-widgets-everywhere dept.

druid_getafix writes "The first mass market reviews of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger are trickling in with a big thumbs up for the release. Walt Mossberg of the WSJ says 'Tiger Leaps Out in Front' but complains about slowness of some applications - notably Mail. David Pogue of NYT says 'But with apologies to Mac-bashers everywhere, Spotlight changes everything. Tiger is the classiest version of Mac OS X ever and, by many measures, the most secure, stable and satisfying consumer operating system prowling the earth.' In related news Mossberg also covers the rising incidence of spam/virii in the Windows world and says '...consider dumping Windows altogether and switching to Apple's Macintosh...'. Previous reviews of Tiger were covered on /. earlier."

Nope. Their CPU sales went up 40% last year without you. They don't need you or your demographic to be successful. Premium price for a premium product. Besides, the mini isn't a real part of their product line (kind of out of place, imo). Start with the iMac and factor out the price of a 20" LCD and you'll find that things make a little bit more sense.

As a geek, you want a beige box that you can plug into your existing system. Apple doesn't want people to be using apples that don't look like apples, ergo i

The Mini works like any other Mac. I think it's missing a microphone but I don't know about the others. I use a Mac Mini and it works great! I don't have a subset of features or anything. I can rip CD's, burn DVD's, it recognizes my USB drives, Firewire drives, my iPod, I can even rip video off my camcorder. All this with my existing monitor.

As do I, but I really thing Apple need to do something about getting a cheap machine out. I can build my own for half the price of a Mac mini, and until they can match that they won't be getting any of my money, and I'm sticking with Windows.

ROFLCOPTER. "Apple need to sell a cheap [$250] computer."

An upgrade to Windows XP Professional is $200 alone. How much computer can you buy for that last $50? Sorry, but if you're going to complain that a $500 isn't cheap enough, I'm going to say you're a biased troll who thinks pirating an OS makes a computer cheaper for comparison purposes. You can't call something cheaper if you're stealing part of it.

"Man, that $2000 PowerBook is too expensive. If they had a $1000 laptop, I'd buy one, but NOT SOONER NO OMG."

"Man, that $1000 iBook is too expensive, but if they had a $700 Mac, I'd buy it. NOT SOONER, though!"

"Man, that eMac isn't cheap enough for me. I can build my own computer for $10 and a pack of paper clips. Wake me when they sell an AFFORDABLE computer."

"What? They're charging $500 for a computer?! Too bad they don't have a $250 computer, or I'd buy one."

This pattern is real, but it exists not because would-be Mac owners are stand-offish about parting with money, but because PC prices have dropped, and dropped faster than Mac prices.

The problem, of course, is that people look at the cost of the hardware alone, and not the cost of the OS, upgrades, and applications and the value of the security and usability advantages provided by Apple. Windows piracy (and Windows applications piracy) probably hurts Apple more than it hurts Microsoft.

Apple has got this one right. There is NO "OS X Light." There's just one O/S to serve them all...

OS X comes with web server (Apache), SSH server (where's that in XP anything?), a SQL database, and many other things that you can't get without XP Professional or even Win2000/2003 Server.

Now, most of those "advanced" services are turned off by default, but they are there if you want to use them, and don't cost anything (other than the space they take up) if you don't ever configure them.

I think Microsoft's OS strategy sucks, because it generalizes: I need Win2003 Server Standard Edition--or is it Enterprise Edition?--to get some of the services I need, but need XP (Home,Professional) to get the desktop bubblegum that my kids want. I can't pick and choose--Microsoft does it for me and I don't get a say in their selections!

Of course, you can always get freeware/shareware or commercial add-ons, but that ups the price of the OS.

So... the proper comparison is OS X would be to purchase XP Professional with bits of Windows 2003 Server (total cost, mucho dinero!).

Who wants to bet that Microsoft will continue this silly strategy with Longhorn? I can see it now: Longhorn Home, Longhorn Professional, Longhorn Advanced Server, Longhorn Lite, Longhorn Media Edition, Longhorn Tablet Edition, Longhorn Pocket Edition... And what will developers target? (This requires Longhorn Home, with some bits of Longhorn Server, but is incompatible with the display driver in Longhorn Tablet...)

Photo management? gPhoto has pretty good camera support - if you're using the right USB drivers. That gets the photos from the camera - now, what about organizing and editing photos? Slideshows with transitions, audio, etc? iPhoto kicks butt here.

Video editing? First find and configure the firewire card drivers for the chipset you have, then go get what? Cinelerra? Too hard for a linux geek to make work. VirtualDub, Kino? WAAAAY too limited in terms of features and ease of use.

DVD mastering? Don't get me started...

Music software? XMMS is pretty handy for playing music, but organizing, sorting? Grip for capturing the data...

OpenOffice and GAIM on linux are fine tools. NeoOffice and Adium are fine tools on my Mac, and they work almost identically on the Mac.

The point is that it's POSSIBLE to do these things on linux. On my Mac, it's EASY.

Write a letter, print it to a remote printer, rip a CD and copy it to a USB or firewire equipped MP3 player, take digital photos, create a slideshow with music, export it to a readily available format (doesn't have to be quicktime, but find something equally easy for the recipient to use.... Compare start-to-finish time on both platforms. My Mac clobbers linux in this.

Apple is obviously not interested in competing with all this crap'n'cheap PC storese and hardware floating around. Why can't people figure that out ?

Furthermore, I've actually spent less money on computer hardware since I bought my Power Mac, simply because I was suddenly so happy with it, and felt no need to constantly change stuff.

I threw my last Windows/PC years ago, running Linux/OpenBSD on my servers, and OS X on laptops/workstation. I dont miss this fuzz about crappy drivers, PSUs that goes black, noice, having to install a shitload of free/shareware just to be able to do something.

Simply put, I value my time, so I save money (and adrenaline) on my Mac's. If you dont mind all the crap that goes with cheap PC hardware, Apple is simply not for you, so dont "whine" about not being able to buy a cheap Mac.

Mac OS X includes speech commands, not speech-to-text. You can't dictate to your Mac using the built-in software. So don't compare it to anything you talked about here; it's a different kind of solution.

That said, speech commands work amazingly well. You can click a file in the Finder and say "Mail this to (name from your address book)," and it opens up a Mail window with that address, the file attached, ready for you to type or just click "Send."

That's cool. That's really cool. No question. But you know what really blows me away? About two weeks ago, without really thinking about it, I did it while brushing my teeth. Seriously. I was sitting at my computer at home early in the morning, still half asleep, with my toothbrush in my mouth. I mumbled "Send the latest blah-blah file to person-so-n-so," which I have set up to trigger a Spotlight search to find the most recent copy of a specific file and e-mail it to the named contact. (I have to do this often enough it was worth automating.) I said this with my toothbrush in my mouth, with a mouth full of Crest. And it understood me.

Honestly, it kinda freaked me out a little. It was a very "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" moment.

(Just for fun, I tried it again, and it didn't work. I guess I was able to mumble it just right the first time, totally by random chance. Got lucky. Still a pretty funny moment.)

Here's a good one if you want to confuse a voice dictation system. In Burbank, CA, there is a street named Pass avenue, and it includes an overpass that passes over the freeway. If you were to travel that on a certain major Jewish holidy, you would "pass over Pass overpass over Passover".

Good luck getting that recognized by today's speech recognition systems!

the whole point of the Mac voice control is that it DOESN'T NEED ANY TRAINING.

of course a "well trained" system will be better. jeez...

the Mac voice control isn't about, say, replacing typing (that will never work properly anyway). it's about commands. that's why it works so well - there are a limited number of words and phrases, though still some flexibility with precise phrasing.

the best use imo is the things like "home phone for Joe Bloggs" which will access the Address Book and display in huge font the home number. dismiss it with "ok" or "thank you" etc.

another good one is to select a file and say "mail this to Joe Bloggs" which open mail, starts a message to Joe and attatches the file. it's good because it actually saves time as opposed to a lot of voice control stuff which ends up taking LONGER than to just do it manually.

No news as to when Java 1.5 (I refuse to call it Java 5 - see more) will be out. However, Apple has said that Tiger will be required for Java 1.5 (ie they're not gonna make it compatible with Panther)
Early reviews of 10.4 Beta have said that a beta version of Java 1.5 is there, but seeing as apple hasn't mentioned anything, I'd be surprised to see it on an actual 10.4 disk.
Summary: Java Tiger on Mac Tiger? If not now then soon.
More: As for the name Java 5...
Java 1.0 was Java 1.0.
When they came out with Java 1.2, they called it Java 2
Then they had Java 2 versions 1.3, 1.4, etc.
Now they have Java 5.
Come on people! I don't care what your versioning conventions are, I just care that you have some.

Java 5 (Tiger) is not included in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). But Apple's got it under development and I'd suspect there'll be a Java update to Java 5 within a short period. Apple's been making test builds available to developers.

The mini handles it all absolutely fine. It can render every single effect, but some of them are a little slow - the ripple effect has been manually turned off by apple because it runs at about 10fps. Two effects are slower than that, others are much much faster, but the mini can render every one of them fine.

I have a dual 1 ghz power mac. I have a lot of ram 1.5 gig, and manipulate images in photoshop 7. Without core image acceleration its very good, especially with some of my larger images which can by 100 megs each. The only time the wait is anoying is when i'm using genuin fractals "degrain" filters which are slow (20-30 seconds) but work very well.

It even edits video ok. All without the core image.

My understanding of core image api is if the machine can't send the operations to the unsupported video card it just uses the main processor. minis have 1.2-1.4 ghz so they should work prety well for any image task thrown at it.

You're wrong. CoreImage will use a capable GPU if you have one, otherwise it will run on the CPU. Same deal if you're running a firebreathing dual-G5 with an FX5200 graphics card - Core Image will take the fastest route to getting the job done.

I don't think the limit is on the video memory - I think what Core Image needs to be hardware accelerated by the GPU is a card with programmable hardware shaders (which most likely coincides with the video RAM level you mentioned). I believe this is on par with "DirectX 9 compatible" cards on XP.

The other thing to note is that even if hardware acceleration isn't possible, Apple has optimized their low-level system libraries to provide a suitable (though not as high-performance) substitute. I have the last non-white/non-silver powerbook, and upgraded it to a G4 550, from a G3 500. The speed increase in things that were purely floating point were about 10%, as you'd expect from the bump in CPU speed. But for things that used Altivec (ripping in iTunes and some image processing stuf), the speed increase was anywhere from 25-33%.

I'm curious to see how Tiger will run on this machine. I suspect that it will probably be the last release that officially supports this machine, but heck, it's 5 years old already, and by the time the next release rolls out, I SHOULD get a new PB;-)

Pity, I haven't got my copy yet. Can't wait... Spotlight will definetly change everything.. I wish we had this functionality on our windows network. Usually colleagues have a habit of making emssy files and storing things all over the shop, if we could search on meta data that would really help. From what I can tell so far, spotlight means you no longer care where things are, they simply exist and the context becomes the "path"... Truly innovating and definetly worth my money.

Spotlight is "locate" with something like fam automatically updating a database when a file's name or metadata is changed. The gnu findutils have been on *nix systems- including OS X for a long time, and have been available under Win32 for as long. Windows also has had what's called "indexing service" since Win2K, and "Microsoft Fast Find" as part of Ms Office for a while. All of those things are file indxing systems like spotlight. All Apple did to "innovate" was to make the interface a little prettie

Spotlight is not "locate", is a combination of locate, grep and Firefox search-as-you-type.

The main innovation in Spotlight is incremental searching, not waiting until pressing enter. This allows the user to refine the search on-the-fly, which is a big usability improvement. OK, incremental search is not new. But system-wide incremental search? Now this is a new feature.

It's more than that. I've kinda given up on explaining why, though. Let me explain with an example.

A year ago, my friend George e-mailed me a funny picture of an elephant walking through snow. (It had snowed at a zoo. The picture was funny.) The other day, I wanted to see that picture, but I couldn't remember where I'd put it, or even if I'd put it anywhere at all.

I tried Spotlighting "elephant" and "snow," but the photo was probably named DCS1003 or something, and I never got around to annotating it with a caption or anything. So that didn't help.

Then I tried searching for George's e-mail address. That didn't help either, because George has sent me thousands of e-mails.

So I typed the following query into Spotlight: "George kind:image".

Poof. There was the picture. Spotlight knew to associate the picture with George because he's the one who e-mailed it to me. So it found it.

(This whole example was totally made up. But I just tested it on my Mac, and it really does what I said it does. George is not his real name, but part about the elephant is true.)

I'm always amazed how people seem to be able to judge the quality of an operating system within just a couple of hours. I can't imagine that you can really tell if productivity and/or stability have improved within a couple of hours.

I'm always amazed how people seem to be able to judge the quality of an operating system within just a couple of hours.

Journalists, especially high-profile ones like Mossberg, get preview versions of new gear long before the rest of us specifically so they can review it. They sign non-disclosure agreements to make sure the technology doesn't get into The Wrong Hands, and the vendors generally know the journalists will behave because the journalists have their entire career invested in it. If Mossberg tried to distribute pirated versions of Tiger ahead of the release date, Apple would stop giving him advance copies, and he'd lose prestige as a journalist.

I remember reviewing for GameSpot (back in the dot-com days), receiving a game and having 1 week to write a review. You may be thinking "One week, so what?" but you've got to paint a picture of the game accurately enough that it answers a key question for the consumer: "Should I buy this thing or not?" I remember a few times I gave low review score to certain magazines on games that should've been higher (Twisted Metal 1, why did I rate you so poor

I've had Tiger on my 17" powerbook for a few days now - it's actually installed on my iPod so I can dual boot.

One thing I have noticed so far is that Expose seems a lot less fluid than in Panther. Has anyone else noticed this, or am I going mad? The difference is noticable even with only a couple of windows on the desktop.

Other than that it seems nice. My Vodafone 3G card works, and most apps that I have tried. The only thing I can't get working yet is OpenVPN - as the TUN/TAP driver isn't ported yet.

Apple, now raking in profits from its iPod, should seriously consider lowering their prices on their high-end machines to gain market share. Currently APPL is trading at $36.35 +0.40 (1.11%) a share and the stock has gone up consistenty since 2003 when it was around $10 a share. Now is the time for them to make some moves. If Tiger indeed blows away XP, so they should try to advertise it more, get it out to as many people as possible in order to increase their popularity and inspire more people to use and develop Apple software. If everyone had a better alternative to Windows for say just a fraction more in price, people would start buying it. The iPod has already convinced people Apple is a good brand, all they need is a price incentive to switch to Apple PCs.

OS X may be better than Redmond.*, but 95% of computer users and corporations would rather have a better OS ~that they can install on their current hardware~.

Not true. That's true for geeks like us. Most people have absolutely no what an operating system IS, and upgrade their lifestyle by buying a new computer. I am currently finishing a masters degree with a bunch of people that complain they need a new computer, because "this one just doesn't work anymore." They're using P4s and Windows 2000, and are going to upgrade to XP, not aware you don't have to get rid of your existing hardware. For that matter, they could speed up their machines by simply reformating all the spyware off and starting with a fresh system, but no. They're going to Dell.com to pick out a "better" machine.
Thank God for those people. I get lots of good quality, 1 year old hardware from them for cheap. Not my fault they didn't take the time to learn about their computers.

There's some evidence to suggest that they're headed in this direction already. The last time their Powerbook line got a bump, they also got a mild price cut. Their Cinema Displays also just had a mild price cut, bringing their average cost from "an arm and a leg" to "a hand and everything below the knee."

Of course, once their sales hit a certain level, their incentive to keep dropping prices goes away, and there's only so much growth a company like Apple can reasonably expect to support in a given period. So, in other words, ignore me completely.

Apple has managed to stay in business for 25 years. They have managed to turn a profit for the last 5 years. This is especially good performance given the nosedive the technology industry has been during the same period.

I dare say they know what they are doing. That's like saying Daimler Benz should drop the price on their high end cars to compete with GM.

I would love to make the switch, but I am not sure I could justify it. I know it is all subjective, but what is a good reason to switch away from WinXP? Looking for real reasons to switch, not trolls or flames.

For reference, I don't have problems with virii, my system never crashes, and all of my main programs (mainly design programs from Adobe and Macromedia) run very nicely. So what would I gain from switching?

Initially, you'd be less productive (say one week, tops) and afterwards you'll probably be a lot more productive.

That's the top one reason I always keep hearing from multimedia professionals who've switched. What makes them more productive? Workflow management, which seems to be easier in OS X, better handling of files and more freedom and consistency in setting up the perfect work environment. This includes scanning, printing and all color-proofing issues.

For some things it's the difference between one click versus four. For some things it's simply features not available on Windows.

And today it's a lot easier to set keyboard shortcuts just the way you want them and adapt your workflow to your taste. So switching has for the most part become trivial.

I'd say coupled with the cross platform apps you use, there's at least not a compelling reason not to switch. If you personally would gain a lot by switching is another issue.

I know, a pretty wooly answer. In the end it's down to your preferences and way of working. Best talk with fellow designers, see what they think about it, and see if what they say applies to your situation.

DON'T ask the geeks here at/. they'll bog you down with arguments that have nothing to do with your reality;-)

> DON'T ask the geeks here at/. they'll bog you down with arguments that have nothing to do with your reality;-)

Totally agreed. They will claim KDE and Gnome is the holy grail of desktop computing. Sorry to disappoint you, but it's a far cry from Aqua. KDE and Gnome still requires the console for more than trivial tasks. Aqua, on the other hand, manages to hide the BSD-beast that's doing the crunch work.

as a point of reference, I majored in CompSci, and have used a variety of Win, Mac, Unix/Linux.

Well, the main reason I use Macs and MacOS isn'nt blazing speed differences and OMG!!! It just works!!! statments. although I have yet to install a driver to get something om my PowerBook to work. I don't know how they do it, but most things seem to not need a driver or use a preinstalled driver of some sort.

I use Macs because they make me efficient. I feel more comfortable sith a Mac and lots and lots of nifty solutions make it a better platform for me. An example: When I work in Photoshop, all I need to do in order to view all the open pictures is to take the mouse in the lower right corner. Expose kicks in and I can see every picture I'm working on. If I want to see all the open apps and switch to another, mous in the lower left corner. Another example; everything is drag'n'drop. I'm composing an email and need a picture from a website? Just drag the pic from safari over in the email totally seamlessly. And both the email client and safari are preinstalled. Easy-peasy.

There is so much to tell, but just try it. If it is good for you use it. If not, don't.

We use Groupwise at work, doesn't work there. But there's something interesing about your statement. You didn't know it until now. In the Mac world, there's this wierd feeling you get that "this probably works" and you try it. Usually it works. It is difficult to explain, but the global drag and drop feature is so thightly integrated that one tend to use it. In Windows, it works in some situations and not others. I don't have the time to find out what apps / situations that can have DND to make them more efficient. In Mac, you just do it.Sorry for the bad explanation, but the feeling is difficult to describe.

I would love to make the switch, but I am not sure I could justify it.
I know it is all subjective, but what is a good reason to switch away from WinXP?

I can't tell you why to switch, although the fact that you "would love to" is probably a start.

I got an iBook G4 at home, because I was intrigued by OS X, and because it was actually competitive on features and price for its part of the market.
I bought it shortly before I became more interested in digital photography, and iPhoto has been a nice bonus.

Usng both a Windows2K (was using XP for a while as well) computer and a Mac day to day, I can list some little things that annoy me on Windows that are solved by the Mac:

Lots of windows? Taskbar has two modes, neither of whcih work very well - either fold your icons together and make it really a bother to get to, or have the taskbar go to multiple lines. Expose is just SO much better a way of dealing with finding multiple windows.

Macs don't ever hide menu items just because you've not used them for a while.

Ever had a Windows Window no respond to you because a modal dialgue has popped up somewhere and that window is now obscuring it? Well, I have and Macs do not have that problem due to a much more intelligent way of handlind modal popups (it's embedded in the window that spawned it).

Config files for every app that are really text and editible (or removable) by hand.

UNIX utilities as first-class members of the OS and not something that clings to life within the system. Yeah I'm looking at you Cygwin!

Usable simple text editing app (TextEdit). Both Wordpad and Notepad have unique issues that means you can't just automatically use one or the other (why do you think they are both still there). Heck in Tiger you can just use TextEdit for 99% of your word processing since it reads/writes Word files and supports things like tables.

Everything supports save as PDF through printing interface. No need to use Acrobat.

A home directory that reallly is in one place!!! You don't have to search the whole hard drive to REALLY back up all your app settings. They are all under ~/Library.

When people talk about being more productive on a Mac, these are the kinds of things they mean. It's all the little annoyances that are part of using Windows day to day... you don't notice them after a while but each one makes you just a tiny bit slower and interrupts your workflow. In my experience Macs have a better sustained throughput for humans. Sure if you're just sitting there typing a letter one may not be faster than the other, but it's when you have to stop typing and make transitions when your odds of being interrupted are lower on Mac.

And for less subtle reasons - Spotlight? Dashboard? Automator? These are pretty compelling reasons all on thier own, especially if you can write code at all. And if you can't then Automator should be even more compelling.

I use Adobe and Macromedia applications regularly on both systems. First, you need to make sure your particular applications are well supported on the mac, or it is a non-starter. Adobe has several projects where they have mostly abandoned the mac.

Asssuming you do not use any of these the main advantages are:

Better GUI - UI elements have better feedback and make a lot more sense. (buttons pulse and when the system is working stay lit so you the system registered

A lot of people will make this into a religious debate -- which I'm guilty of from time to time -- but it's really just a matter of personal taste.

I have Macs and Win boxes in both my home and work offices. I've got a Debian box at home as well.

There are very specific tasks that work better on the PC in my opinion. For me, those tasks are games and Maya. This is coming from an artist's perspective primarily, a coder's perspective second and gamer's third.

Everything else, I use my Macs for because they just 'feel' right. It feels like I'm drawing with my left hand to use Photoshop under Windows with an identical interface and mostly identical key commands. Mouse acceleration curves feel funky, and I loathe -- nay -- LOATHE the fact that the majority of apps I use have to have a second desktop behind them (that gray background you get when 'maximized'). I like seeing my desktop. I like having a palette monitor that's got my email client in the non-palette space. I like the Mac's implementation of drag & drop. I like the lack of reliance on the second mouse button to do everyday tasks.

Quark Xpress 6+ is flaky on any platform at any speed, however type is significantly more manageable and supported on the Mac.

BBEdit is reason enough to buy a Mac, all by itself if you're a coder. It's rocked my world for years (network-wide find & replace from circa '95 -- maybe earlier) and just keeps getting better.

Don't even get me started about Windows and CMYK support, professional level color management, search functionality ("find" was practically instant across all drives and servers BEFORE spotlight -- now we have instant filename, content and context-sensitive metadata). Coupled with 45 minutes on my 3ghz P4 to search just my frigging C: and D: drives.

Once you get yourself immersed in the Mac, it fits like a tailored suit -- there's an astounding amount of tiny bits of polish and subtle features that have been cloned to the Win side by someone who didn't understand the meaning of elegance or subtlety (see the Longhorn 'Glass' demo that's surfacing for a prime example).

Anyhow, at home I choose my relatively slow 17" flat panel iMac G4 over my screaming and fully loaded gaming and Maya PC for almost every task because I'm more productive and happier. YMMV.

The Safari browser now subscribes to R.S.S. news feeds,And its "private browsing" mode conceals the tracks of online deeds.There are archives now, and log files, when you send or get a fax;You can make the pointer bigger on those Jumbotron-screened Macs.You can start a full-screen slide show from some photos on demand;And the voice that reads the screen aloud can lend the blind a hand.There's a password-phrase suggestor meant to make yours more secure,And the Grapher module draws equations simple and obscure.Then the Automator program is a geeky software clerk -You just choose the steps you want performed, and it does all the work.There's a lot of miscellany, lots of spit-and-polish stuff,But it works and doesn't slow you down - and these days, that's enough.

"What percentage of Windows PCs are 0wn3d by one or other parasite?By multiple parasites? By spammers working with crackers workingwith corrupt web site designers and pornographers? Enough, I thinkto ensure that within a short time - say 6 to 12 months - we willhit infection levels of 50% and more. The vast majority of homePCs, happily connected to the Internet, will be hit, and a largeproportion of office PCs, insufficiently secured and protected,will also succumb."

This was written in September 2003. And it's just starting to hit the general consciousness now?

Their new automator [apple.com]
framework, which let applications send streams of objects to each other and have them propose interfaces to interact with.(Well that's how it seems to work at least). It looks like the equivalent of unix pipes for desktop apps. Something i've been waiting for for years.

I hate to tell you this, but both of y'all got it wrong. We're learning a lot about our marketing here, and one of the things we're learning is that while ordinary people get Automator instantly, computer nerds don't. They tend to overthink it.

The fundamental object in Automator is the action. Think of an action like an old-fashioned Unix command-line utility like "sort" or "uniq." Each one has an input and an output, kind of like "stdin" and "stdout" but more discriminating.

Using Automator, you string together actions to create workflows. Workflows are kind of like pipelines. You start with one that generates some kind of output, then pass that output to another action, then to another, then to another.

Example: Let's say you have ten pictures on your desktop, and you want to resize them all and add metadata like a copyright notice, something that's common to all 10. You go to Automator and start with the "Get selected Finder items" action, then click on the "Scale images" action, then click in the "Add Spotlight comments to Finder items" action. When you select the files and run the workflow, it does what you want.

A more complex, real-world example. I use InCopy a lot. One of the things I always have to do is take an InCopy document, map styles to XML tags, export the document as XML, then run the resulting XML file through a little utility to strip out some InCopy weirdness that Adobe inserts. This is a fairly manually intensive process. I automated a chunk of it with an AppleScript about eighteen months ago when InCopy 3 first came out, but I still had to do the fiddly stuff by hand. Last fall, I created an Automator workflow that would let me call that AppleScript ("Run AppleScript" is an Automator action), then pass the output on to a pipeline of actions that processed it in just the way I needed. I now use that workflow several times every day.

Like I said, normal people get it pretty quickly. Geeks seem to try to overthink it, to think about it in terms of object models and scripting.

Everyone is a buzz about Spotloght and it is no doubt going to be great, but I am also looking forward to improving productivity with Automator.

As with lots of scripting languages, sometimes it is just plain faster to brute force what you are doing than sit down, recall a language syntax and function set, write a script, give it a test, and then run it. What I see as cool about Automator is that it makes building a script so freaking easy and fast and since you can call scripts with scripts, you can build a nice function library of scripts to make the process even faster.

I am also digging on Dashboard. At first I didn't like the idea of a second desktop that is different than the first, and I will have to try before I agree that it makes sense to keep these on a different desktop, but I love the idea of the small applets (I used Konfabulator breifly) for small tasks like weather, itunes, stock tickers, and calculator. That they take minimal system memory means I will be more apt to keep them open and within easy reach without having to launch the applicaiton.

Lastly, I am totally excited about iChat AV supporting up to four people (including me) in a video chat. It just looks so cool to see three people sitting around the virtual room like that and this feature is making me finally break down and buy the iSight. It looks like the best autofocusing camera available for $150.

So can it search for relationships between files? Not just metadata, content of filename, but stuff like "show me the emails with the picture of the dog that I sent to members of my family"?

SpotLight is not just metadata plus content. It's also about relationships between objects. You can create relationships by dragging objects about (say a picture of a dog onto an email to family members) and SpotLight remembers them in detail (the dog metadata in the image is then in a relationship with the people in the email address fields, as well as the email itself and any objects inside it).

I am the only one who's totally pissed off that not only is there a MICROSOFT ad on this article (probably appearing on others, but this one especially) but it HONKS A HORN AT FULL VOLUME? What is wrong with SlashDot?

Don't get me wrong, Tiger seems like a great operating upgrade. I think its a little steep at 130$ but probably worth it.
My problem with it is that it fragments the new mac users more than 10.3 did. Here is why.

They give the developer new tools/frameworks for easier better application development. These are great. HOWEVER, if you a developer choose to use those new features your software ONLY works on 10.4 (tiger) not on 10.3.
core data for example [apple.com] . Also it looks like apple won't make java 1.5 work on older versions of the mac OS, meaning they won't work on older versions the the OS either.
This further fragmenting apples small market share, adding frustration to developers and software purchasers alike. You have to code with the older frameworks or compel your users to update. This is a not required but "strongly compelled upgrade"

I keep seeing all of these posts where someone mentions they can get a PC with 'X' ram, 'X' HD, 'X' CPU for 'X' cheaper than a Mac...
You can also go buy a $1000 Honda and add all sorts of ground effects, spoilers, lights, and other 'performance' mods and have a pretty quick little car that will beat a BMW 740il soundly... But it's still a Honda.
And unless you're stupid, you'll wind up going down the road at the exact same speed as that Beemer.
The only difference is that you added all of that stuff to your car, you know every rattle and squeak, tolerate the lousy ride because you can corner like no ones business, have bass that can make your neighbors evaporate, and you can fix any of it easily or upgrade it...
Meanwhile the guy with the Beemer has a 10-year warrantee that covers tears in the upholstery and doesn't have to think about the car, he just drives it. He gets to spend his weekends out playing with his kids rather than tweaking a new intake manifold, can drive the car from Denver to L.A. without worrying about the radiator being two sizes too small for the type-R motor that has been shoehorned into the car, and his stock sound system is pretty nice because he doesn't need 3000 watts to overcome the #10 coffee can exhaust system.
Of course the average/.'er drives a VW Thing that was hand built by everyone he/she knows, only runs on methanol that he/she makes in the back yard, has the steering wheel on the wrong side, and requires three keys to start.;)

You wear wraparound sunglasses, even indoors. You wish your mother would let you ride a motorbike. You tell your friends you're pulling in $50,000 a year and $2,000 a month "playing the stock market" but in reality you're only bringing in half that and your dividends from MSFT havn't been good in years. Your non computing friends all turn to you for help; you only charge $30 an hour. Your collegues talk about you behind your back. Your workplace nickname is likely to be "The Asshole". Unlike the Linux fanboys, you actually try to pick up dates in bars but women laugh at you.

Apple

You think you're so cool you hurt. You have mirrors on every wall in your "loft apartment", which is really a grimy little apartment next to a guy who plays Guns 'n Roses at 3am. All of your furniture is from Ikea. You sometimes think that changing your name to "Steve" would be "pretty cool". When you go to bars you only drink Miller Lite. No body ever asks you for help with their computers because they know you don't know anything but OS X, even if you do tell them you "run Unix" now. Your friends openly laugh at you.

Linspire

You regularly give $10 bills to homeless guys because you have too much money. Computers baffle you, but you enjoy looking at pictures of naked women. You don't know what Linux is, but you continually bugged the IT guy at work about your computer so he installed Linspire on your machine.

Umbongo

You shop at GAP. You probably used to use a Mac. When you saw the multiracial image used as a desktop picture and heard that this operating system came from the same country as Nelson Mandela, you knew it was for you. You meet with your friends in fair-trade coffee houses and talk about the eventual overthrow of evil corporations such as Microsoft and Starbucks. Like the Linspire user, you have very little real knowlege when it comes to computers but you would never use your computer to look at pictures of women degrading themselves.

Gentoy

You've been "into computers" for ohh, one or two years now and fancy yourself as "a bit of a hacker". Wouldn't know C from C++, or even Perl for that matter. Older Gentoy users may be building their homes from matchsticks. You've explained to all your friends that your matchstick house will have an "optimised floorplan". They've tried to tell you that your house violates every known building code and law in your area, but you've ignored them so far because you can't read those complicated regulatory documents.

Linux From Scratch

Much like the Gentoy user but you'd also be into sadomasochistic sex if you could get it. You're not just building a house from matchsticks, you're planing to grow the trees to make the matchsticks. You've cleared some land but don't know what to do next because you havn't read the books you've got, so you've posted to alt.arborists.newbie asking for help. It's been three days so far and no one has replied. You remain hopeful.

8. Emacs
Your devotion to the One True Editor is such that you (secretly) don't care what manner of kernel/windowing system you use to light off to run brilliant stuff like Gnus, ECB, or ERC.
You like the substance of the GPL, even if you fall short of the full-on reactionary "ethical" style that some are capable of achieving.
You wonder why the OS can't be as unobtrusive as the BIOS, and just serve Emacs quietly.

Wow, I haven't laughed so hard at a post in a long time. Here's my spin on the Windows Fanboys I've met:
Windows Fanboy-
You used to work at Best Buy and you drive (**insert small foreign car model**) that you just installed your own oddly shape spoiler on. You refuse to spend any money on software, and everything installed on your machine is either cracked or pirated. Your currently working on your MCSE, but those damn TestKing cheat sheets are so expensive!!! You cruise high school parking lots search

David Pogue should disclose that he is a popular author of Apple books [amazon.com]. I don't disagree with what he says, and I am an Apple fan, but if you have a major interest in Apple you should probably disclose it when writing neutral articles for the NYT.

IF anyone considers tomorrow a special day at all, it's probably because it's Friday, or because "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" movie opens, or because it's Uma Thurman's birthday.

It's also the birthday of former Japanese Emperor Hirohito, now known as "Midori no Hi" or "Green Day" (no relation to the band). It's an important national holiday as it kicks off "Golden Week," which consists of three other national holidays including Japan's national day and Boy's Day. So, if you were thinking of vis

This point has been run into the ground by now but I guess some people still don't get it. If you started with 10.0, you have to pay $130 to get to this point. No one is forced to upgrade. If you don't consider the enhancements being offered to be worth the cost, don't upgrade. Panther will work just as well tomorrow as it did yesterday.

you can't take a quote, edit it to death to remove the point of the sentence, and then call it hype. "consumer" was the key freakin point in that sentence and you just said "haha no. I shall rewrite this to mean something else and then call them liars!"

Can you show me another consumer desktop OS that's as stable, secure, and satisfying? It ain't Linux, Linux isn't 'consumer' enough. No more than a Ford F-850 is a 'consumer' truck.

I will dissolve my structured storage wholeheartedly. Smart folders will be my directory structure. Fear will keep the local files in line.

It will be a lot easier to just add the project information into the metadata than rely on a fixed directory structure. For example, if I want to view files related to projects A, B, and C then I can just search for all three. If I want them conviently grouped, I'll create a smart folder. When I don't care if they are grouped anymore, smart folder is gone.

It will be a lot easier to just add the project information into the metadata than rely on a fixed directory structure.

Um. I really don't want you to buy Tiger and then be disappointed.

Spotlight isn't a general-purpose annotation system. In order for you to apply metadata to files, you have to have three things. First, a file format that supports metadata. (Metadata is actually stored inside files.) Two, an application that supports adding metadata. And finally, you have to have a Spotlight importer that extracts the metadata.

Example: Adobe has not yet shipped (for some bafflingly reason) their importers for their file formats. These importers will be able to read XMP metadata and store it in Spotlight. But right now, they're not available. So if you want to add Spotlight-savvy metadata to an InDesign file, you are completely out of luck. It can't be done, no way, no how.

Spotlight is great. I love Spotlight. Spotlight has changed the way I work. But if you go into it hoping that Spotlight is gonna do a whole bunch of things that it's just not equipped to do right now, you're going to be pissed. And I don't want you to be pissed.

Now, that said, you can group all JPEG files together based on width and height criteria. That works fine. And you can use Spotlight comments to store free-form, unstructured metadata. But don't hope that Spotlight is a general-purpose file annotation system. It's not. At least not in this release.

"I just do NOT need to have a widget telling me the weather, I've windows in my house, thanks. Neither I need a stock tracker, or a currency converter, and much less a calculator or a calendar or a fligh tracker or a world clock (Why on earth would 99.9% of the global population want to know what time is in other part of the world?) "

Um, some of us have lives that take us beyond those grimy windows? I LOVE the flight tracker, world clock and currency converter. To me these will be the three top most useful

The FreeBSD personality makes up a small component of the entire OS; the kernel is Mach-based (although not quite a Microkernel), and most of the rest has nothing to do with FreeBSD (or any other OS, for that matter) whatsoever.

A bit of a write-up on the Mac OS X architecture: http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/

the biggest things that have changed in the OS are really below the surface.

for the developer, I think CoreData, CoreImage, CoreVideo...

the thing there is that when developers take advantage of this, you will need to upgrade to use the neat new features in those new applications that take advantage of them.

CoreAudio, from panther, made creating audio plug-ins (for logic, live, etc.) relatively easy to build functions that work in a variety of applications as they are based on the architecture of the OS r

...in the Windows world, iTunes runs rather slow, has limited features... and takes up an inane amount of memory

For what it's worth, I don't find that to be true of iTunes on OS X. Not knowing what you mean by "limited features", I can't address that, but having used iTunes on both Windows and OS X, I can say that OS X is the better environment to run it in. Which shouldn't be surprising to anyone.

I really like Spotlight, and I have to say that counter to your assessment that something needs to be built that will make things easier to organize that there are a lot of people that will never care and just dump documents somewhere.

However I do agree that for those that seek a cleaner path, a tool that made the creation of symlinks much easier for normal people would be cool. To some extent Smart Folders in spotlight and other systems fill this role in that a smart folder is sort of like getting a directory with links to all of the files from one subject. But I think you might end up with results not quite exactly what you want at times - like too many files or perhaps missing a few. So a tool that let you build a set of symlinks using spotlight as a base might be pretty interesting and has the possibility of eliminating the need for photo management apps for many people.

Hmmm... do you have kids? From your comments I doubt it. Let me tell you, as the father of 5 yr old twins it is a scary world out there. Much different than when I grew up. There are a bunch of bad people out there that would love to do my kids harm, both online and in the physcial world. It is my responsibility to protect them, but also temper that so as not to be over protective. I appreciate all the help vendors can give, so I can decide what to do. Not the government, not you, but me and my wife.

On a lighter note... my Tiger shipment is on the FedEx truck for delivery today. Woohoo!